By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee touted his proposal for a “mayoral academy” charter school Friday as a “low-risk, high-return way to regionalize high-performing schools in a way that crosses both urban and suburban communities in a cost-efficient way.”

Making his pitch to the House Finance Committee, McKee said the mayoral academy would be a regional public school, run by a non-profit organization with a history of operating successful schools, open to students from Cumberland, Lincoln, Pawtucket and Central Falls who would be selected by lottery for available classroom spots, with mayors from those communities involved in the governance of the facility.
“Extraordinary change is needed in the state of Rhode Island,” the mayor said, “but extraordinary change does not happen overnight. It happens incrementally. This is a very good step in to talk about a number of things that are being discussed in the General Assembly as well as being discussed in every neighborhood in the state of Rhode Island.
“We realize that financing is an issue,” the mayor told the panel. “We are not here to ask for money. We are asking for a policy that will allow us to regionalize high performing schools in a way to contain costs. That is what our community wants and that's what the state wants.”
It is those potential policy changes — which would exempt the academy from prevailing wage laws, teacher tenure and pension and other benefits — that created controversy about the academy, igniting the opposition of the two state teacher's unions and, to a lesser extent, the Rhode Island Department of Education.
James Parisi of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals testified that “half this bill is gutting existing employee protections, whether it is the prevailing wage provision, the tenure provision, the pension provision, all those changes are incorporated and for whatever reason tied to the creation of mayoral charter schools. I don't understand that policy direction.
“I don't understand the policy where opening up the possibility of lower pay and benefits is going to enhance public education,” Parisi said. As the proposed law is written, Parisi said, “I believe at a minimum it opens up the possibility of lower pay and benefits, not necessarily better pay and benefits.
“The policy issue of cheap labor being better for kids is something I disagree with inherently and for this reason alone I hope you reject this legislation.”
Noting McKee's construct that this is a policy issue rather than a funding issue, Parisi told the lawmakers, “I can't separate the two, and I bet you can't, either.”
Henry Boeniger, lobbyist for the National Education Association of Rhode Island, accused McKee of “trying to subvert collective bargaining” through the legislation.
McKee and an expert hired by the coalition of suburban mayors that initiated the legislation had the opposite take on the bill.
“The idea,” McKee said, “is that you can't have good education without the very best teachers, so we would be paying a fair market value for teachers in this program. Does that mean entry-level teachers would make more than current entry-level teachers? It's possible.
“We certainly don't want to give the impression that somehow containing costs is going to happen based on paying the professionals who are going to be needed to be hired to do the work.”
Bryan Hassel, co-director of Public Impact, a North Carolina-based research organization with expertise in national education policies, said similar schools around the country “often offer starting salaries that are higher than the prevailing rates and they can rise faster for teachers who succeed.”
Hassel said, “This model doesn't specify a salary schedule, it doesn't specify a benefits package. The idea is to invite these organizations that have succeeded elsewhere to propose models to the mayor and other members of the board and they will approve the one that seems to have the best plan.
“This is a nationally unique idea of pathbreaking innovation that has great opportunity to boost performance while containing cost,” Hassel said.
Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond said his community has “reached the ceiling of being able to sustain” the current educational structure.
“The truth is,” Almond said, “the opponents have no solution. We offer this as an alternative.”
Both Steven Nardelli of the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools and Keith Oliviera of the state Department of Education said that the mayoral academy concept could move forward within the structure of the current charter school law, but under questioning from Chairman Steven Costantino, Oliviera acknowledged that the current law would not allow modification to prevailing wage and benefit language and other changes McKee is proposing.
The school would not be responsible to local school committees, but to the board of directors and the state Department of Education.
Outside of the hearing, McKee said teacher pay “is an irrelevant issue that clouded this hearing and I hope the finance committee totally dismisses it.” He said the non-profit organization that would run the school would have a long-term contract to do so, and would not sign on if they knew the funding rug could be pulled out from under them and they would be forced to, for example, cut salaries or benefits.